


A Grand Complication

by DyingNoises



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Alternate Universe - Western, Case Fic, Clockwork Connor, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sherriff Hank, yeehaw it's high noon in gay robot town
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 18:30:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20840084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DyingNoises/pseuds/DyingNoises
Summary: A traveling salesman brings incredible clockwork automata to the sleepy town of Old Sonnerie, Wyoming, but the rash of violence that follows has Sherriff Hank Anderson looking underneath the skin.





	A Grand Complication

**Author's Note:**

> It was my absolute PLEASURE and DELIGHT to work with MaxImproving on this piece, I had so much fun with this piece and I'm definitely looking forward to bringing new chapters soon!

October 11th, 1899 settled into the valley one cool grey morning, crisp and clean. Already the coarse brush of the open range was browning (well, browner even than it was in the dry heat of the summer), tall grasses gone yellow, spindly trees looking spare without their patches of green. A stiff wind blew down from the blue shadow of the mountains in the distance, snaked between the red-topped mesas that framed the Green River basin, and made them all dance in its grip. This town was still small enough to have a view like this.

If you got far enough away from the railroad, that is.

Old Sonnerie used to have a lot more traffic coming through back in the day, cattle driven down to their depot to be shipped east to Cheyenne or west to Portland, coal too, and every night its one thoroughfare would be full to bursting with cowboys and miners, rustlers and hustlers. Things change; markets change. Wasn’t so much of a need to move the cows still living with the refrigerated railcar, and the price per head was half of what it was besides. Town still had its fair share of drunks, though—ranch hands with their wages, drifters looking for the peace of the absolute absence of order.

Hank Anderson found himself dab smack in that second category; Manifest Destiny had come and deposited him quietly in the middle of nowhere when city life had proved to be too much for him, wandering in on the warm welcome of a friend. He wouldn’t go back now if you paid solid gold bricks. Three years was three times as long in a little place like this, here he was just his usual ornery self, an old man in new country. He knew everybody and everybody knew him. He’d settled, and when he settled, he was damn hard to move.

So hard to move, in fact, that he was still in the chair he’d occupied last night at the saloon, feet kicked up on the table and hat covering all his face but grey whiskers. His arms were folded loosely over the swell of his belly. The snort he woke himself with was awfully incriminating evidence that he’d been snoring just before. He was vaguely aware of the comforting weight of his pistols at his hips, which was good—meant he hadn’t been robbed yet. Blue eyes like a pair of mountain springs blinked blearily at the light that filtered through the straw of his hat and squeezed right back shut again. Migraine coming in, he could feel it.

As if to corroborate his assessment, a train whistle wailed and set his temples to throbbing. “Somebody,” he growled out of a desert-dry throat, “shut that thing up.”

“Boof,” said a furry mass from beneath the table.

“Good dog.”

The sudden clack of a metal cup setting down on the oak beside his feet carried such a fiercely stern energy that he knew who was standing over him without so much as a peek. The voice rang out clear as a bell, lovely as a songbird that’d just as soon peck you. “Why is it you’re always my only customer ‘fore sundown? Is it your smell, scarin’ everybody off?”

North could pretend to be irritated, but the strong scent of coffee was far too friendly for her to be anything but good-natured. He didn’t budge an inch. “Mornin’, ma’am.” His hat was snatched off his head and Hank met the light of day with a hiss and such a reflexive jerk that he just about toppled his chair over. His boots and the front two legs of the chair hit the floor heavy enough to jolt the mug into dark ripples.

“Henry Clarence Anderson, you ma’am me one more time and I’ll blow your knee out.” North was the toughest woman he’d ever met, lean and hard and clever as a fox, suntanned with long auburn hair in a fishtail braid over one shoulder. Her dark eyes twinkled with warmth when she handed him his hat back, black gloves over her delicate hands—or, they looked delicate, but Hank had taken a punch from them before. They were not. “And it ain’t mornin’, it’s half past two.”

“Shit. You serious?” He sighed, lowering his hat back over his eyes and heaving a dramatic sigh, “Today’s shot, then, may as well try again tomorrow.”

“_Hank._”

“All right, all right! Dammit. I’m up.” Hank set his hat on the tabletop with a sour look, brows still scrunched up from the hammering behind his eyes. God Almighty, he prayed he didn’t have to climb up on a horse today. His Saint Bernard, Sumo, shoved his gigantic head up under Hank’s palm and he returned the gesture by finding exactly the right spot in the crease of his ear to scritch and scratch. “Thanks for the joe.”

“You sleep all day and you’re here all night. What kind of Sherriff are you if you’re never out Sherriffing?”

“Now, you just ain’t thinkin’ strategically,” his chair creaked when he leaned forward, dwarfing the mug between two thick forearms. He flashed North his gap-toothed grin. “Consider my position. If I’ve gotta keep an eye on every troublemaker in town, and they’re all _here_, then obviously it’s for everybody’s safety that I keep a front row seat to proceedings.”

“Uh huh. Ain’t you a little old to be takin’ these boys for all they’re worth?”

“Bah,” he muttered around the rim of the mug.

“Or takin’ ‘em upstairs?”

Hank choked on his coffee, coughing hoarsely through what dark roast he’d aspirated, “North, Jesus fuckin’ Christ, some shit’s supposed to stay private!”

The woman shrugged lightly, reaching over to dab his chin dry with the corner of her half apron. “That’s for callin’ me ‘missy’ yesterday.”

“Yeah,” he raised his voice to call after her as she left his table, “I meant to say _ma’am!”_

North flipped him the New York Giant finger as she went, weaving through tables and chairs back to the bartop. Presumably to stock inventory, or whatever it was she did before opening up at dusk. In the quiet of her absence, Hank lingered over his coffee and contemplated crashing at the inn to sleep off the hammers thumping on the inside of his skull. Naw. The Mayor’d kill him if he caught him doing that… again.

He was dozily appreciating the grounds at the bottom of the tin mug when his deputy came in through the shutter doors, breathing a sigh of relief to see him there in his seat. Hank understood the sentiment. This was the first place he’d come to look for him, and at least he didn’t have to go hunting anywhere else. “Hey, Miller, what’s the good word?”

“Sir,” Hank didn’t feel much like a ‘sir’, but Chris was ex-Army and old habits died hard. “Hoped you’d be here, just wanted to report that we received a telegram from Cheyenne. Mr. Kamski’s train left earlier than scheduled, they should be arriving in about two, three hours tops.”

“Son of a bitch. Is that today?”

“Yessir. Mayor wants you at the station, something about a welcoming committee?”

Hank groaned, burying his face in his hands. Of course he did. He thought he’d left all the pomp and circumstance behind him in Detroit, but Jeffrey was convinced he could eke out a piece of proper society out where it didn’t belong. Or maybe Hank’s standards had simply fallen well short of the dream. He tried to massage his brain through his eyeballs, calloused fingerpads rubbing incessantly against his lids.

Wasn’t helping.

“All right, okay,” he picked his head up with a sigh and gave Chris a nod of complete resignation. “If he asks for me, tell ‘im I’m home getting’ washed up and presentable. I’ll be there just in the nick of time.”  
  
“Always are, sir.” The man’s pin-straight posture eased when he returned the nod, heading back out through the swing doors. He paused a moment, then looked back, squinting suspiciously at Hank’s barrel chest. “Sir? Where’s your badge…?”

“Aw, shit,” he pat himself down, lips twisting into a grimace, “I think I bet it.”

*****

A cold bath had done wonders to sober him up, and within a couple hours he was standing at the train station in a fresh shirt, squeaky clean. He’d brought Sumo with him but sent him back to the jailhouse with Chris after Mayor Fowler fussed so much about it, it brought his migraine back around. There wasn’t much to do but wait. He lost track of how many times he’d adjusted his hat or tugged at his jacket sleeves, boot tapping impatiently against the wood of the landing. The town doctor, Kara Williams, gave him a sympathetic smile.

“This town doesn’t get many visitors, does it?”

“No, ma’am,” he flinched for half a second, expecting an elbow in the ribs as with North. Kara was a much more patient soul than she, and a married woman besides. “Just as soon keep it that way.”

“I heard this Mr. Kamski made a sizeable donation to the town in order to have his little presentation here.” They both side-eyed Fowler, who pointedly ignored them. “Hitting every stop on the Union Pacific from Chicago.”

“If his merchandise does half of what they say it does, it’s gonna put an awful lot of good men outta work.” She didn’t answer him, then, and he felt the weight of the silence between them. He remembered her first husband was reported to have died in a mine shaft. Asphyxiation. He cleared his throat and quickly changed the subject, “Don’t suppose Luther could make me up a new badge sometime?”

Her gentle face broke into a smile, “Again? How many is that now?”

“Four.”

“The last one was four.”

“Five.”

“I’ll let him know, but he might bill you double this time.”

Hank let out a gruff chuckle, tucking his thumbs into his belt. Those two, they were good folk. He turned to stare down the long stretch of empty rail, lowering his voice to speak again, “How’s your daughter?”

“She’s well,” Kara said, just as quietly. He could hear how tired she was, how thinly stretched. “She’s better every day, just… Slowly.”

There was so much he wanted to say, but when he opened his mouth the words soured on his tongue. He wasn’t good at it, the whole tenderness thing. As simple as it was to say that he had a hole in his heart that damn near matched Kara’s, it was too fragile, too vulnerable to let it out.

So he hummed his quiet acknowledgement and let the wind carry what they’d spoken through the grasslands.

Elijah Kamski and his whole retinue rolled into Old Sonnerie just before sundown, a smallish coal train in good condition, about a dozen cars, three suites, several cargo. Seemed like it must’ve been a newer purchase, likely for this traveling show of his, and certainly spared no expense judging by the plush green velvet seating he could see in the gap of the half-drawn shade of a window. Along the side of each car was painted the word “ClockworkLife” and a mural of silhouetted heads and shoulders staring up into a radiant sunbeam-split sky.

Certainly the sun was Kamski himself. Not pretentious at all. He could just about have rolled his eyes clean out of his head until the door of the first car slid open.

Out stepped the most beautiful man Hank had ever seen in his life.

Tall and graceful as a white-tailed deer, dressed so finely in a crisp shirt and a tailored jacket that looked well more than his annual salary. Creamy skin dotted with a stardust smattering of freckles. Christ, Hank loved a good batch of freckles. He stepped carefully down to the landing, pushing a stray lock of hair brown as his morning coffee away from his forehead and back into place. Clean. Meticulously groomed. He glanced toward them and regarded each in turn before polished-agate eyes, alight with life and keen and clever, met his own.

He took off his hat out of sheer reflex, pressed it to his chest. “Mr. Kamski?”

The man tilted his head quizzically, charmingly, and then his perfect mouth split into a smile so warm it was as a panacea for his every ache and ill.

“I’m Elijah Kamski,” came a voice from the train car.

Hank’s attention snapped to the man in the doorway.

It wasn’t half the same impression as the first guy. Elijah Kamski was a thin, sunken-eyed man in expensive but crumpled clothes, his shoulders bent and hands like knobby claws from his years of delicate, tinkering work. He had a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose and peered over the frames at the three assembled there, coming heavily down the steps to join his travel companion.

“Yes, of course,” Jeffrey stepped forward to shake Kamski’s hand, sparing Hank continued embarrassment. “Welcome to Old Sonnerie and the beautiful Green River basin, Mr. Kamski. We’re ready to provide you with the finest hospitality during your stay.”

“Oh, I don’t intend to stay.” Kamski sniffed, turning his nose up as he surveyed the thoroughfare beyond the station. “Not to do your lovely town any disrespect, but I have a great many more stops ahead of me. More hearts to seize and minds to titillate, west to Portland and then south through the grand state of California, all and all an ambitious undertaking that cannot afford to be delayed.”

“Wouldn’t want that, would we,” Hank deadpanned. He had a kind of knee-jerk dislike of the man he couldn’t quite place, but the slime he saw in Kamski’s smile when it turned on Hank surely didn’t help the assessment.

“No, we wouldn’t, mister…?”

“Hank. Hank Anderson, Sherriff.”

“Sherriff, then. I forgive your earlier confusion.” Kamski turned his attentions to the enchanting man beside him, trailing the back of a swollen knuckle along the curve of his jaw. Something in Hank’s gut twisted at the gesture. “Magnificent, is he not? My newest development. Cutting edge.”

The understanding didn’t come right away, but when it turned up it punched the air straight out of his lungs. “Wait—he’s—” Hank stared at the figure he’d been so drawn to, alarmed, “_that’s_ one of your—”

“One of my automata, yes.”

The man stepped forward and extended his hand formally to Hank. “My name is Connor. I’m a series 800 prototype.”

“Connor, huh…?” The Sherriff hesitated, looking at the gloved hand as though half a dozen knives might burst out of it. He finally reached out to shake it, if only to quell the sudden shame of cowardice that flooded him. “Pleasure’s, uh. All mine, I guess.”

Connor’s lips, he swore, quirked at the dry humor. His doe-brown eyes looked him over, assessing him against some unknowable rubric, then the automaton finally pulled away.

He could see it, now that he knew what Connor was. The corset he wore, which Hank know felt intensely conflicted about imagining ripping off of him, wasn’t boned fabric, it was a series of steel panels that ran the circumference of his middle. Under his gloves, when they shook hands, Hank felt the unyielding metal of his joints and digits through the Italian leather. He never would’ve known. Never could’ve imagined.

Not a face that could smile like that.

He cleared his throat and turned back to Kamski, tucking his thumbs back into his belt as though to keep his hands from making any bad decisions. “Well, Mr. Kamski, I appreciate that you have a schedule to keep, but if you don’t wail ‘til tomorrow, your show’s liable to be in pitch black night.”

“That won’t be a problem, Sherriff Anderson,” Kamski smiled his slimy smile at Jeffrey, folding his hands eagerly. “Now, where may I set up my stage?”

*****

Kamski was right, the dark wasn’t a problem at all.

There in the middle of town for all to see was a grand stage lit by strings upon strings of modern incandescent lights, far and beyond outshining the dim red glow of the kerosene gaslamps along the road. Hank had seen them before in Detroit, but never this many and certainly never in Old Sonnerie. It was a spectacle unlike any he’d seen in his 53 years living. The folk gathered around had already gotten something of a preview: a dozen automata working in synchronous movement to build the stage from modular pieces pulled from a cargo car, their shirt sleeves rolled deliberately up to their elbows or shoulders to expose the polished brass of their plates and joints and gears.

It was coordinated and efficient, a task done in half the time. Hank mused that if he’d tried to wrangle any ranch hands into doing that, they’d probably smash more than a few thumbs under the rubber mallets. The crowd muttered quietly, some impressed, some already foreseeing the application in their own jobs.

To Kamski’s credit, he damn well knew his audience. His demonstration wasn’t showing off a single laborer, no—if the carriage waiting behind the stage was any indication, he’d save those for meeting with the cattle barons themselves. Here, right now, the automata revealed with the sweep of a curtain: a pretty blonde dancing girl.

The atmosphere beyond the stage changed instantly. Already there were hoots and hollers swelling from the crowd as she stepped forward and posed and blew little kisses and danced little steps. Opaque tights and gloves hid her metal components, as did the sparkling leotard, but she most definitely had breasts, which was going to be a top marketing point for Kamski, Hank was sure. He saw North watching from the distance, out on the veranda of her saloon. She lingered a moment, then shut herself away inside.

He didn’t suppose he blamed her. He was uncomfortable, too.

“Imagine this lovely lady cooking your supper when you come home after a long day in the dirt! Or bring one home to your missus, let her mind the children and handle the washing for you both for some well-needed… quality time?” Kamski called out to the audience to raucous support, “Every ClockworkLife Automata is programmed to serve only its owner—no maintenance, no disobedience, no stress!”

“How does it work!?” called someone from the crowd, and Hank wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t a plant.

“Very glad you asked, sir, very glad! Chloe, my dear, the sample?” The blonde bobbed a curtsy and tiptoed over to a safe in the back corner of the stage. When she bent over to open it, the men went wild all over again. Was every town like this, or just his? She brought her creator something encased in a glass box, a dark chunk of rock like unprocessed ore that seemed to shine blue under the hundred lightbulbs.

“There I was,” Kamski said, prowling around the stage with eyes like fire. He was an entirely different person when he was performing, “trapped in a crevasse in the artic circle, separated from my expedition. My rations were dwindling! I had only the snow to slake my thirst! I knew I could no longer simply remain idle and await rescue, so I followed the rock deeper, deeper still, to a cavern far below the frozen crust!”

“Fuck’s sake,” Hank muttered from backstage, behind the curtain.

“There I found it, ladies and gentlemen, this miracle substance with power the likes of which this grand country has _never _seen! It took endless experimentation, but one day, I fashioned a heart of it for my beautiful Chloe, and do you know what she did, my friends?”

There was a silence rapt with attention.

“She. Woke. Up.” he said, each word a dollar-sign stamp on his annual revenue, “And she _winked_.”

The blonde, Chloe, put her hands on her hips and gave a wink to the audience and the crowd burst into applause.

Hank drew back from the heavy velvet of the curtain and snorted, glancing aside to the automaton Connor who stood quietly nearby. “That just reeks of bullshit. How does it really work?”

Connor smiled at him once more, something twinkling in his molasses eyes, “I’m afraid that’s proprietary information, Sherriff Anderson.”

“Oh, okay, sure.” He shook his head, rolling his eyes. “It’s weird that he’d make them so…”

“Appealing?”

Hank jerked as though struck, staring at him with eyes blown wide. “Uh?”

“Every automaton is designed to be physically attractive. Myself included.”

“Yeah? Well, you look like a fuckin’ ponce.” He’d been reactionary, defensive, when he spat the words out, but Connor only laughed. A genuine laugh. He didn’t know how it was possible, but it sounded like music. Infectious. It took Hank a tick to realize he was smiling, too. He wiped the expression off his face and cleared his throat, looking pointedly away.

Connor stepped up beside him and folded his hands neatly behind his back, seemingly content not to press the matter further. He smelled like polish and fresh linen, tea tree and juniper from his pomade. What was the _point_ of it, dressing him up like a leisurely gentleman, giving him that kind of soft voice that made you want to lean in to catch every word, if he was going to just be a laborer?

Unless he was like the blonde? A ‘companion’ automaton?

A hand grabbed his arm and Hank nearly jumped out of his own skin, “Hey, what the hell—!”

“Sherriff.” Connor said, his gaze fixed somewhere into the night, posture stiff, tense with potential energy, “There’s someone on the train.”

Like hell he could see that far with all the light from the bulbs here, or that’s what he had intended to say until an explosion burst at the train’s caboose and lit it damn well enough for him to make out the shapes of figures closing back in on what they’d just blown open. His hand flew to the pearl handle of his pistol. Bandits. “Stay here, I’m gonna muster my men and Connor what the shit!?”

The automaton was already running towards it. Kamski burst backstage, alarm and dread plain on his face, “What happened!?”

“Dynamite, three, maybe four men, your prototype just charged straight in!”

“Well, go after him, idiot!” the engineer’s blood pressure was so high he was fit to give them a second detonation right there, “If he gets damaged, I am holding you _personally_ responsible!”

“Aw, fuck!” Hank stumbled over his own two boots, putting himself into immediate motion after the automaton, and into danger, “Fuck my fuckin’ ass!”

As he closed in on the side of the depot, he could make out the situation: a wagon hitched to four horses, pulled up to the rear car. They were unloading what could only be automata, or at least he hoped, because in sleep they looked damn near like corpses. Connor had crept up to the side of the car but wasn’t approaching. Slowly, cautiously, he stepped further away from the scene, towards the front of the car and past it to the next. Clever. Confronting them from inside provided a chokehold that four men couldn’t overpower, and the cover of the previous car in the event of a retreat.

It also gave Hank time to catch up.

When he reached the second to last car and climbed up into it, he saw what he knew he’d see, but not in the way he’d expected. Row upon row of bare automata, all brass and steel, with no clothes and no human-like faces, standing still and silent, like something out of a nightmare. He stumbled back against the doorway, bracing himself there like it could keep him from tumbling inside the void of it. The sound of gunshots beyond their lifeless frames was what spurred him back to being. Some of the shots were too distant to be the bandits, so it could be Chris returning fire from town—he had to move before Miller got his dumbass shot.

He shoved his way through them all with a curse and seized Connor by the arm just as he was about to open the connecting door.

“Leave it! Let us handle it, you’re not even fuckin’ armed!”

Connor looked at him in total surprise, then Hank saw his eyes flick down to his waist. “You’re right, Sherriff. Good catch.”

He seized one of Hank’s pistols right out of its holster and threw the door open, bursting into the room and catching the bandits just enough off-guard to get the first shot off. He barely had time to process Connor’s movement as he ducked behind the cover of the doorway with a curse. He heard a shot, and then a scream, debilitated but not dead. When he peeked around the corner, he watched Connor take a shot at 30 yards and hit the rider of the wagon, cutting off their escape. Well, almost. The horses went berserk, lurching forward with sixteen powerful legs all in a panic. The wagon took off and Hank swore he heard Connor say, “Shit!”

Hank threw himself through the doorway in the confusion, running to the end of the car and out onto the rail. He was too late to stop Connor. The automaton was in full pursuit.

He chased after, too, if only to keep an eye on how it all shook down. Watching him was something incredible. Connor sprinted faster than some horses, clambering up onto the back of the wagon after the aimlessly fleeing bandits. He could see the shadowed figures under the canvas cover of the wagon, two slumped down at the front, one shielding the other. The third was on his feet and doing a bang-up job holding his own against an automaton. They traded blows, but Connor must not have been calibrated for bouncing-flighty-horse-carriage because his balance was completely fucked. The bandit kicked him off the back of the wagon and Connor went rolling in the dirt.

Now that he was stationary, at least Hank could reach him. Connor was back on his feet and raising Hank’s pistol to fire when another shot boomed like thunder in the plains, the horrible shriek of metal on its heels. His pistol toppled to the dirt and Connor tucked his hand reflexively in towards his chest, doubling over it. Did it hurt? Could he… be hurt?

The wagon got away.

Hank slowed to a jog as he closed in on Connor’s position, chest heaving as he panted for breath, bracing his hands on his knees, “Jesus Christ, Connor, I told you to leave it alone! Fuck. Thank your lucky stars you’re okay, or I would’ve kicked your shiny metal ass. That Kamski guy was gonna have my head if—”

Connor turned towards him, a puddle of blue cupped in his palms. His trigger finger had been blown right off, the digit laying still gloved on the ground beside his pistol. Hank could see the jagged edges of broken gears and twisted metal where the leather had torn away. He managed to rip his eyes away from it to look into his face. A patch of skin was missing from his right eye, blue streaking down his cheek like tears. The brass skull underneath called to mind the faceless automata in the cargo car, and Hank shuddered.

He hadn’t meant to. He couldn’t help himself.

It must’ve been obvious, because Connor quickly covered his damaged eye with his good hand, “It can be repaired.”

“Sure. Good. That was…” Hank looked him over carefully, noting the tears in his fine jacket, his slacks. More places his frame had been exposed. “You fought ‘em off before they could take any more. You did good, Connor.”

The automaton turned toward him, expression one of surprise. Some of the tension eased out of him, just a little, a relaxing in the joints, a slight widening of his stance. His hand slowly lowered from shielding his face and he gave Hank a grim sort of smile. “Not good enough, I think.”

“Let’s take you back to your boss. He’ll be beside himself ‘til he sees you.” The Sherriff clapped his companion on the shoulder, guiding him back towards town. It was quiet, dark this side of the depot. As they walked, he mused aloud, scratching at his beard with one hand. “Strange. Usually train robbers strike while it’s still in motion.”

“Their goal was the automata. They’re too heavy to move at twenty-five miles per hour.”

“Cassidy’s disconnected whole cars.”

“Hmm,” Connor said, and Hank didn’t push it any further than that.

In the distance, he could just barely make out Jeffrey speaking to the crowd to disperse and Kamski sitting in a chair backstage being comforted by his blonde miracle-winker. Wherever the bandits had gone, four horses and four wagon wheels would be easy enough to track in the daylight. It was unlikely there’d be a manhunt until then. Guess he was going to have to afford a delay in town after all, huh? God, he wished he wasn’t so pleased about that.

Connor slowed at his side, then halted, staring down at his hand. Hank stopped, too, looking back over his shoulder with one brow quirked.

“It was impressive.”

“Thanks.”

“No, Sherriff. The shot made by the assailant. The one that took off my finger. When we were in close-quarter combat, I saw he had a patch over one eye.” Connor reviewed his damaged hand with a clinical precision, a cold detachment Hank hadn’t yet seen in him ‘til now. “This is an incredible level of accuracy for a one-eyed man.”

Hank paused, brows furrowed in puzzlement. The automaton’s bearing in this moment was almost unsettled, uneasy. He took a few steps back towards him, enough to reach out and take his hand. He reviewed it himself, not that he knew much about ballistics that witnessing the event didn’t already tell him. “Damn lucky shot.”

Connor gave him such a blank look that he would’ve laughed if he had any humor left in him tonight.

“Or not. So, what does it mean?”

There was a quiet moment stretched between them, delicate as gossamer, the autumn wind flowing over and between them as they stood together, still as the mesas beyond. Connor gazed deep into the horizon to the south, the direction in which the bandits had escaped.

“I don’t know yet.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please go see Max's incredible art!!  
https://t.co/G3cB9k1Rv7?amp=1
> 
> See You, Clockwork Cowboy!
> 
> @DyingNoyses on Twitter


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